Such flashlights are used in professional applications and also known as so-called “tactical flashlights”. Due to the particularly stable design, the flashlights can also be used as a bludgeon against persons or for breaking panes of glass. Since the housing of the flashlights essentially has a round cross section or is characterized by a rounded outer contour, the lamps have a tendency to roll when set down on an uneven or unsteady surface, which is especially disadvantageous when the user of the flashlight needs the light for working with a tool of weapon with both hands, for example, and the cone of light no longer strikes the (work) surface being illuminated.
For this reason, there have already been efforts in the past to provide the flashlights with an adaptable rolling protection. U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,229 calls for shoving onto the rod-shaped housing a cylindrical ring with five or six rolling protection surfaces uniformly distributed on its outside. The cylindrical ring is supposed to be frictionally locked and also magnetically secured to the rod-shaped housing, insofar as a ferromagnetic flashlight is used.
In practice, however, it has been found that a removable rolling protection often gets lost under the frequently harsh conditions of use and is no longer available for use.
A fundamental prior art is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 6,158,874 with a flashlight that has a rod-shaped housing and a bulb-shaped light body at its front end. The light body has a ring that is concentric and axially parallel to the rod-shaped housing, with a plurality of planar rolling protection surfaces directly adjoining each other in the circumferential direction. The main drawback of this known flashlight is that when the flashlight is set down on a surface it takes up a position that is slanted relative to the surface, due to the end of the rod shaped housing away from the light body having a smaller diameter, and the rear end is tilted downward. This, in turn, means that the rolling protection surfaces are not effectively in contact with the surface, or only slightly so, and the desired rolling protection is not accomplished to the needed extent. Another major drawback is that the cone of light when the flashlight is set down is no longer emitted axially parallel from the light body, but instead shines upward at a slant.